1936

Born in Oakland, CA, the second of four daughters to Carol and Dwight Baldwin.

World

Jesse Owens represents United States in the Berlin Olympics, Spanish Civil War.

1941–1945

Linn

The war years, and I am mesmerized by images of battle published in Life magazine.

World

Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust

1949

Linn

My father dies in January, just short of his 50th birthday.

For the next two summers my mother attends classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and studies photography with Minor White. She meets Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Dorthea Lange, among other Bay Area photographers.

1950

Linn

Mother starts a photographic portrait business in her home. I learn darkroom technique from her.

1951–1953

Linn

I am sent away to a small, private high school in Massachusetts and am initiated into the world of leftist politics.

In 1953 I enter UC Berkeley to study architecture and live at home. I meet fellow student Bill Underhill.

World

McCarthyism rampant, Rosenbergs sentenced to death for spying, Watson and Crick discover chemical nature of DNA.

1955–1956

Linn

I drop out of college and take classes at California College of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute, including a seminar with Dorothea Lange. She praises one of my photographs, which becomes a talisman for the years when I am postponing my career and raising kids.

World
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus.

1957

Linn

I marry Bill Underhill who has been drafted and we move to Heidelberg, Germany. We travel in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium.

World

Sputnik.

1958–1964

Linn

Birth of our three children, Sarah, Joe and Kate. Bill re-enters UC to earn an MFA in sculpture and studies with Pete Voulkos. We move from Berkeley to New Mexico to Connecticut to Brooklyn in search of fame and fortune, which elude us.

1972

1974

My younger sister dies of melanoma, pregnant with her second child, leaving a two-year-old daughter and a grief stricken husband.

World

Nixon resigns.

1975

Linn

Our oldest daughter, Sarah, graduates from high school, goes to Outward Bound in Maine, and runs away from home.

World

Final pullout from Vietnam.

1976–1982

Linn

1976 My husband has a mini-nervous breakdown. I decide to take control of my life.

1977 I spend the summer in Rochester in an internship at the George Eastman House and a workshop with Nathan Lyons. I have an affair with a woman and come out as a lesbian. Bill and I separate.

1978 I earn my BFA from Alfred University, studying with John Wood and Jesse Shefrin.

1978–1982 I buy a house in Rochester and move in with my youngest, Kate, and Tina. I start the graduate program at Visual Studies Workshop. There I study with Joan and Nathan Lyons and Keith Smith and meet Catherine Lord, Martha Gever, Adam Weinberg , Sally Stein, Martha Rosler, and Allan Sekula among a host of interesting and stimulating students and visitors.

World

Soweto, Elvis dies, ERA, Sandra Day O'Connor, 3-Mile Island.

1982

Linn
Tina writes a tofu cookbook and tests her recipes on us. She finally leaves me for another woman. I earn my MFA and publish an artist’s book about my sister’s death called Thirty Five Years/One Week.World

Israel invades Lebanon, Marine barracks bombing.

Thirty Five Years/One Week

1982

1983–1984

Linn

I hook up with Nancy Gonchar and move to thirty acres in Lisle, New York. Residency at Light Work, Syracuse, NY, and NEA Artist Fellowship.

World

Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman vice-presidential candidate representing a major American party.

1985–1991

Linn

I hold a number of adjunct, part-time and short-term teaching positions at Ithaca College, Cornell University, Binghamton University, Rutgers University, and Syracuse University. I meet Eunice Lipton and Ken Aptekar, who remain lifelong friends and supporters.

Six of my grandchildren make their appearance between the years 1985 to 1997, with the seventh joining us in 2005.

1986

Work

Fresh out of grad school, newly divorced and armed with theories about appropriation, I take on my mother’s archive of wedding photographs to comment on the imperfect institution of marriage.

The smiles are from the faces of brides and grooms, enlarged to 30” square; the texts alternate between the lyrics of romantic love songs and lists of the banal parts of marriage that sometimes spoil the fun.

1988

I meet my partner, Ann Carter. Nancy and I split up. I spend a week in Sonoma County, California, on the ranch where my father grew up, hoping to find some trace of him.

World

Act Up.

1990

Linn

Ann and I spend the summer in Florence where I teach in the Syracuse University Summer Program. I receive my second NEA Fellowship.

1991

Linn

Ann and I have a commitment ceremony at our home in Lisle and I start teaching at Colgate University.

World

Anita Hill, end of Desert Storm.

Claiming the Gaze

1991–1993

Work

I aim to subvert the ways in which women are photographed in advertising and other public media, photographing my friends and family assuming a pose—in this case the unfamiliar and unaccommodating pose of female toughness.

1996

Linn

I turn sixty and friends and family give me a beautiful canoe.

The Tomboy Suite

1996

Work

Friends who attend a conference about "Sissies and Tomboys” comment on the dearth of material about tomboys as compared to the wealth of material about sissies. I offer this as a museum for tomboys—a place, in which the lost histories of hidden desires are made visible and legitimate.

1998

Work

I discover the work of George Platt Lynes and embark on work that will become NoMans Land.

Based on 1940s portraits taken by the gay photographer George Platt Lynes. Lynes invests these portraits of the heroes of my youth with a sensual softness that is clearly homoerotic. I think it would be interestingly perverse if I insinuate myself into their clothes and pose, embracing their glamour, appropriating their success.